South African Dota 2 players have been buzzing all morning after a reddit thread confirmed that South Africa will have local Dota 2 servers. Not long after, MWEB GameZone announced that they will be hosting these servers.

The South Africa region will be added to the region selection screen with Update 2 and we can expect to have a really good ping.

“This is another level reached in our ongoing mission to improve the online gaming experience for local players,” says Desmond Kurz, Online Gaming Manager at MWEB. “Local Dota 2 players will now have the opportunity to create new play strategies that are not apparent at the high pings that they are used to playing with on EU and US servers.”

Ping is something South Africans have been struggling with when playing online games on international servers, so an improvement on that is much needed for a better gaming experience. I don’t really find that playing with a 200 latency on European servers in Dota 2 bothers me at all, but it sure would be nice to have a 5ms latency, which is what MWEB got from their local offices.

Impact on the local community

I won’t say it was extraordinarily horrible playing the first Dota with the local community on Twilight, but it was extraordinarily horrible. All the old school Dota players know that Twilight wasn’t exactly a friendly place, and we all know that we don’t want to repeat that. So this time, I’m hoping things will be way better. Having regional servers for our country means that we’ll be able to play games with mostly South Africans without having to organise with friends or through channels, so if we don’t have local gamers swearing at each other all the time, this might become a very successful community for all of us.

In this article

I like bacon and games, and occasionally I say something coherent about it. I'm not old or cynical, and I'm not the Dork Knight. I AM SHE-RA! Wait, what?

Join the Conversation

http://www.facebook.com/matthew.holliday.39 Matthew Holliday

phew, we should have 2 or 3 days befor there are more russians than south africans on our server
but that will be 2 or 3 days of bliss
excited!
curious to see how much the community has improved in general, compared to the europeans.
time for SA to solidify its own meta game, our do gaming league team picks have been… unorthodox to say the least. would like to see a bit more consistency from them.

with the replay and tournament systems in place, it should be pretty easy to stay in touch with the european and american meta game while being able to play our own one.

Tarisma

The thing is some of those unorthodox picks have been fairly effective.

http://www.facebook.com/matthew.holliday.39 Matthew Holliday

unorthdox is not a problem, but unorthodox plays are useless when there is no local meta, because every play from every team is unusual.
wanting the local meta to stabalise is not a bad thing.

http://www.facebook.com/dewet.lombardbovey DeWet Lombard-Bovéy

Hi Matthew, The thing is for South Africa to create its own meta. We cant use normal consistent picks. The DGL picks are designed(in first division and premier) to be picked and played on the 200ms latency. Were most of the strats thrive. For us to have our own meta and own gameplay. It will be with different strats and different picks. For example. The picks and bans of EU vs Aisa (defence vs G-League) is completely different.
It is good for SA to have unorthodox picks/bans. That means we are well on our way to creating our own style of play. Its left to time to tell if our style can match up against EU US or Asia.

I agree hoping the local meta could stable is a good idea. But look at the first division and Premier. It has started shaping itself into a gang/aoe teamfight strat. having the Gyrocopter. running furion offlane. having that nyx pickup if possible. Running aggro trilanes. Certain trends have started happening for which I am glad. I think it will shape itself a lot more with local servers being used as DGL servers. the drafts will change quite a bit for the lower divisions. but for first and prem I think not a lot will change. Just some smoothing out.

http://www.facebook.com/matthew.holliday.39 Matthew Holliday

thats exactly the point, our metas picks and bans should be consistant/standard for us, but unorthodox to international to international.
i still see our premier teams being described as having a very chinese or european meta.
would love to hear our casters commentating on and about the local meta

I guess it will pick up once the local tournaments get more exposure, i can watch every match from the TPL or star ladder purely because theres a big button that says “WATCH NOW”
while having to remember when and who is playing in the DGL, in order to watch, is a bit difficult sometimes.

http://www.facebook.com/dewet.lombardbovey DeWet Lombard-Bovéy

That is very true. But I do think that in a year or so we will have SA tournies up there in the WATCH NOW section 😛
The problem is the DGL is a league and not a tournament. It stretches over more months than a tournament. and only 1 game per week per team. If they change the structure then it might be viable. The problem is we need big sponsors for that.
One thing I have noticed. SA games tend not to be long games. IE full asian meta. We like playing the Asian meta but tend to push through faster. and have a average pre 30 min game. even if the game was a rough one. So in short I think SA meta is a asian style draft that plays more mid game.
Just my thought on our style of play. 😀 Our team does play Asian style alot more than anything else. As I find it easier to contend with local teams with an Asian draft.

http://twitter.com/NoxvilleZA NoxvilleZA

Leagues can easily be put on the in-game calendar. We’ve approached Valve about this already.

Local meta’s evolve because of isolation from other teams & regions. Some of these meta’s are better than others (metagaming at it’s core is recursive), and this is apparent when meta’s collide (such as at international events). I don’t see why South Africa should necessarily create it’s own metagame, or why that’s inherently better than following any of the other very strong and consistent metagames that exist in NA/EU/SEA/China.

Admiral Chief Erwin

I stopped playing since Saturday, filthy Euro/Russian community. I’m glad I can start playing again this weekend, WITH BETTTTTARRRR PING……muahahahahahahahaaaaa

http://twitter.com/ClericZA Kobus Nel

Might just join you there 😛

ElNicko

so when are us League of Legends players getting our own servers ??

Graeme

Now that would be awesome

gnusmas

do the dota 2 thing.. same game just higher skill required.. once u get going (ignoring flames ofc) its actually fun

Richard Kuiper

Only going to play local tournaments and clannies on local servers. If we all play on local servers our level of Dota will never increase.

http://www.facebook.com/matthew.holliday.39 Matthew Holliday

No, but having a few games with 9 other people that dont say “blbl xaxaxa” is pretty appealing every now and again.

http://twitter.com/Lolita_za Yolanda Green

I can honestly say that playing on EU servers doesn’t really boost my skill, specially when you have 3 complete newbies in your team and get hammered by a clan stacking against you… I probably have a chance to better myself in one out of every five games

Eric Viljoen

Indeed. It’s frustrating to play with a drow, babysitting her, letting her last-hit on creeps just for her to end up with a yasha and treads or even worse… auto attacking

http://twitter.com/Lolita_za Yolanda Green

and just try playing a support hero to a team that fails…

Richard Kuiper

I only play with a team of 5 people, otherwise it is just not worth it. Since playing on EU my skills have been boosted 10 fold. Playing on the EU servers was the best thing to ever happen to me.

Tarisma

i know the feeling, Dazzle FTW.

http://twitter.com/Lolita_za Yolanda Green

Worst.ever. And Dazzle can be such a win hero >.<

Tarisma

I know right, had such a fun game last night Dazzle and Axe in a lane. Was crazy

http://twitter.com/MatthewFig Matthew Figueira

Not only that, try playing a carry in a team that fails 😛 ermagerd! LOSE LOSE all the way if you are the lone wolf :'(

gnusmas

just play cm.. takes a while to get started but worth it in the end IMO. still get same amount of noobish acts on twilight gaming..just the match up system that is causing the perma russians in all the games

Tarisma

some names on twilight spring to mind when i read “wasn’t exactly a friendly place”

http://www.facebook.com/matthew.holliday.39 Matthew Holliday

Go Ganymede!

Eric Viljoen

Gany se ****(ouma).

http://www.facebook.com/people/Paul-Fouche/627282362 Paul Fouche

hahahaha now we will see the true colours of south african gamers…
vloeking each other and demoralizing new comers .. been there done that… burnt the T shirt

Eric Viljoen

We aren’t that much worse when you compare us to the US players. They’re either really mellow, or really elitist.

http://www.codescrawls.co.za/ Edwin le Roux

Lets hope it becomes a friendly environment for new players.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Paul-Fouche/627282362 Paul Fouche

whaha doubt that

Weanerdog

Wouldn’t play any online games on local servers, the high ping is my only excuse for lack of anything resembeling skill.

Sir Rants-a-Lot Llew

This site is just full of good news today

Valshen

Oh yay, can get sworn at in Afrikaans a lot more now. Bit worried about playing 5ms games for a night then playing 200+ the next evening, will see what happens.

Richard Kuiper

That was my only concern.

http://twitter.com/MatthewFig Matthew Figueira

But Garth, I never swear at you in Afrikaans! 😛

Yeah it will be an interesting adjustment. Its going to feel SOOOOOO good going from 200 -> 5ms. If its the other way though, the lag we have gotten used to is going to feel like a freaking anvil of DOOM!

http://www.facebook.com/SparTim0124 Tim Leeroy Jenkins Sterne

i do think the skill level overseas is higher. but im sure with a local SA server maybe it will entice new guys to play. Shows that RSA is coming up in the online community catch you online (and please dont pick Drow thats just a buzz kill)

Tarisma

and riki

http://twitter.com/Lolita_za Yolanda Green

or Zeus the kill thief 😐

http://twitter.com/MatthewFig Matthew Figueira

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!

http://twitter.com/MatthewFig Matthew Figueira

Going to be able to play juke heroes a lot better now hopefully ^

https://twitter.com/jGLZA_b00 jGLZA

Guys its PC, it will never be a friendly environment.

Weerwolf

You guys reckon the cap usage will be a bit less intense? Stopped playing dota 2 since it used about 100MB for a 45min game. How is the cap usage these days?